


What Temmler Werke Taught Us

by pentipus



Category: Breaking Bad, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Christmas Sweaters, Cooking meth, Drug Use, Germany, Kissing, M/M, RVs, Sadness, Science Bros, The Desert, adorable drug peddling idiots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-02 17:26:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5257229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentipus/pseuds/pentipus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann and Newton cook meth in the desert and get in trouble. Adorably, obviously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

JP Wynne High School sat on a patch of dead earth on the outskirts of town. A squat group of medicinal pink-grey buildings against the blue sky, where Dr. Hermann Gottlieb taught advanced mathematics. Hermann would park in his designated parking bay and sit for five minutes each morning, staring out at the high school, mustering the energy to get up and go about his day.

He tried not to make it too obvious that he hated the bloody place, attempting to join in as much as he could bear; helping to organise the summer fairs, the Christmas pageant, chatting with his colleagues in the staff room at lunch time.

There were none that he particularly liked, some taciturn and others tedious, and some that he avoided altogether, Dr. Geiszler from the science department for one. He'd heard the stories of course, everyone knew Geiszler had a ‘history’, he'd heard stories ranging from occasional toker to homeless with a habit. Hermann figured that it was best to go with the average in that case, deciding that Geiszler had probably just dabbled, while managing to maintain everyday functionality. Either way, Hermann wasn't terribly interested in that sort of behaviour, not to mention the man dressed like he were one of the students, had no respect for his title, and was constantly attempting to be 'down with the kids'. No thank you.

Two weeks before Christmas, Hermann had fallen from his borrowed step ladder while trying to string Christmas lights around the gymnasium. He'd landed on his bad knee and spent Christmas on crutches, sighing exasperatedly every time someone asked him if he was ok, do you need a hand with the door, can I take your books, hey Dr. Gottlieb, can we get an extension on that test 'cus you were like, away for a whole week?

On Boxing Day Hermann phoned his brother, Dietrich, and complained about the pain. “No, Dietrich, I'm not taking the painkillers. I suppose you have at least a basic understanding of what they put in those things?”

“Well then, the answer's obvious isn't it?” Dietrich said, laughing deeply down the phone and making Hermann feel strangely lonely. Dietrich was, after all, the only sibling that Hermann would ever admit to being slightly fond of.

“Enlighten me,” Hermann said, stretching his leg out and then slowly drawing it back, his hand on his thigh.

“You need to get high, brother,” Dietrich said before continuing, talking over Hermann's spluttered retort. “All natural, proven to have positive benefits in terms of pain relief, easy to get hold of,  _and_  it might even chill you out a bit.”

Hermann rolled his eyes. “Well, thank you for your input. I appreciate that.” He moved to hang up, but paused to say, “And a Happy Christmas to you too,” before putting the phone down.

Hermann attempted to wait out the pain, hoping it would return to the familiar dull ache that he had always known from before his fall. But as the New Year came and went, the pain remained. Hermann took his painkillers with him to work every day, placed them in the drawer of his desk, but still refused to touch them. After a month of pulling open his desk drawer and staring down at the little white pot of pills, Hermann eventually approached Newton one Friday afternoon, stepping past the students who were filing out of his classroom. He noted that Newton was cleaning what appeared to be a labelled cross section of  _Godzilla_  from the board.

Newton turned, smiling as Hermann approached his desk. “Hey! I haven’t seen you this side of campus very often. It’s Hermann, right?”

Hermann raised an eyebrow as the last few students slung their bags over their shoulders and hurried out. “Dr. Gottlieb,” he said shortly.

Newton half nodded, his eyebrow rising slightly, as though he were holding back a question. But before he could say anything Hermann launched into his practiced speech, attempting to make it as conversational as possible. Pretending that he had come to ask Newton for advice based on the fact that he was a biologist, then making a joke about what his brother had said at Christmas, before inviting him to the bar that some of the staff often frequented on a Friday after work. It felt horribly as though Hermann were attempting to court Newton, trying to say things without saying anything at all, asking him out for a drink. Urgh.

Thankfully, despite the impression that he gave, Newton was not a complete idiot. He seemed to grasp what Hermann was getting at fairly quickly, as they sat with their chattering colleagues that evening, sipping weak American beer. It was surprisingly simple, Hermann had thought, worryingly effortless, despite his inherent awkwardness with pretty much anything that wasn’t numbers on a board. Because of this, he kept that first meeting stored in the section of his mind reserved for memories he wanted to forget, entitled: How Dr. Newton Geiszler became Hermann's dealer.

"How's the pain?" Newton said one evening a few weeks later, busying himself with his electric scales. He looked up for a moment, to where Hermann was waiting just inside the door of his apartment, leaning heavily on his cane. "Is it helping?"

Hermann shuffled slightly. "Marginally, yes."

"Cool, cool," Newton said distractedly. "Listen, er, I know that I normally let you go for credit, but I'm kind of strapped for cash right now, so-"

"Newton, there's no need, it's fine," Hermann reached his free hand into the pocket of his parka and pulled out his wallet. "I have cash."

Newton smiled up at Hermann sheepishly. "Thanks, man." He tipped the weighed weed into a little plastic baggy and began to clip it shut. "It's these damn pay cuts, y'know?"

Hermann stopped counting his money and looked up. "Pay cuts? At the school?"

"Yeah, you don't know about this? How could you not know about this?" Newton was almost smiling, but his jaw was tight. "We’re on the way out, dude. Reassignments, pay cuts, you name it. They're pushing us to quit, so that they don't have to give us redundancy."

"Excuse me, start again, who?"

"Us! You and me, Choi from IT, Hansen from phys ed… The oldies, dude."

"Speak for yourself, I haven't heard a thing about any of this."

"It's cheaper to higher graduates; we're being decommissioned for the younger generation. You might not have heard about it yet, but you will," Newton stood up and stepped towards Hermann, holding out the little baggie, the smell earthy and sweet under Hermann's nose.

"Hm," was all Hermann could think to say in reply.

  

Two days later he was called into the principal’s office and was surprised to find three other members of the board there. He had a choice, a 27% pay cut, or a 17% pay cut and be reassigned as a _teaching a _ssistant__ , which, Hermann assumed, was Pentecost’s idea of a salary sacrifice scheme.

"I am a teacher, Stacker, not an assistant," Hermann had said furiously, tugging at the bottom of his waist coat as he stood, spinning so fast to leave the room that his knee clicked for three days afterwards.

"They're not forcing me to quit, I've got nothing to go to," Newton said to him a week later, weighing out Hermann’s gram of weed as usual. He had taken the pay cut rather than be reassigned to an elementary school down in San Antonio. His belongings were stacked around him in boxes; he'd lost his apartment as a result.

"I'm moving in with a friend ‘til I can find a cheaper place," he said when Hermann had questioned him about his hurried packing. "So what are you gonna do?"

Hermann honestly didn't know. He was almost on the bread line as it was, he couldn't afford the pay cut even if he took the reassignment.

"I think I might start dealing full time?" Newton laughed as he continued, his deft fingers closing the baggie and stacking away his electric scales. "I made more money doing that than I ever did teaching."

"Yes, I'm sure ten dollars a gram to a customer base of four is really going to do the trick."

Newton raised an eyebrow, then looked back down at the baggy in his hands. "No, er, I was dealing meth before."

Hermann was genuinely taken aback, noting that this new information suddenly made Newton look very different, despite the fact that he always looked exactly the same. His hair was still dark and messy, his glasses in a perpetual state of ever-so-slightly wonkiness, shirt sleeves rolled up to the edge of some, undoubtedly, ill-advised tribal tattoo. Hermann had always taken this outward show of messiness to be a kind of stand against maturity, but now it seemed to say something very different. Perhaps that Newton was genuinely fighting his way out of some other darkness, some space where general aesthetic untidiness was a legitimate step up from… From what? Meth dealer chaos? Hermann didn't know enough about the subject to make any sound judgements, so he made an effort to say nothing at all.

Newton stood up and handed over the little bag of weed, smiling at Hermann’s silence, slow and sad. "It's a money maker."


	2. Chapter 2

A month later and Hermann found himself wondering dully what had become of his life. He was stood in a stolen hazmat suit, carefully holding a funnel through which Newton was pouring ammonium nitrate. They were surrounded by beakers, piping, funnels, and trays. All crowded into the borrowed space under Newton’s former apartment block.

Hermann vaguely remembered the numerous conversations they had had that night, and the nights that followed. Newton excited, expressive, tripping up over his words in his haste to persuade Hermann that this was an amazing idea. Formulating plans, listing needed ingredients, calculating expenditures, hypothesising profit margins. Awesome, dude! Amazing! Gesturing ever more wildly as the evening wore on.

Herman had of course said no. More than once. But when he too had lost his apartment he felt like taking action, like doing... something, something to _show_  them. A feeling as adolescent and misguided as Newton’s dark tattoo, he had noted afterwards.

Newton had practically hugged him when Hermann arrived at Newton’s new shared lodgings with his decision. “On the condition that this is a _temporary_  measure,” Hermann had said, holding his cane in front of him to stop Newton from getting too close. “I’m not looking for a new career.”

“Great,” Newton said with a smile, shaking his head. “That’s great, no problem. Awesome.”

Although Hermann had originally been concerned about the illegality of their endeavour, the inevitable encounters with unsavoury characters, it was in fact working in such close proximity to Newton that turned out to be the hardest thing to deal with. His music, his conversation, his _behaviour_. The man was an idiot. Hermann found it hard to believe that he had managed to sit still long enough to earn a single doctorate, let alone the fabled  _six_  that he was always wittering on about.

But, as much as Hermann hated to admit it, he was invaluable. He had the relevant connections, access to much needed space, and he had the experience. Hermann hated to feel like he was learning anything from Newton, but he actually turned out to be a competent and patient teacher. Hermann was an expert after three days.

"You're a fast learner, man," Newton told him proudly, smiling at him.

Well, you're a surprisingly proficient teacher, was what Hermann did not say. Instead he settled on, "Well, I do try."

  

At first they attempted the Nagai method, cramped and overheated in the basement below Newton’s former apartment block. Newton introduced the space to Hermann as his ‘sweat box’; a confined and private place where he and his smoking buddies could congregate and get wasted without having to worry about being caught. “It’s fine,” he’d said. “It’s totally cool, I put a bolt on the inside of the door months ago and it’s never been questioned. No one uses it, I swear.”

Newton had also said that the Nagai method would produce the highest quality product, so they went with that too, at least until Hermann made an executive decision and stated that they simply did not have the time for that amount of faffing about. He was overdue with his rent, about to lose his job, and had been living off packets of unbranded instant mash for almost a week. Although he neglected to mention that last part to Newton.

“There has to be an easier way, surely you didn’t go through all this when you were cooking alone?” Hermann asked him, wiping a gloved wrist across his forehead. It had turned into a hot summer, which meant an exhaustive, unbearable heat under the earth.

Newton shrugged. “Well, I wasn’t cooking before. Not really, I was just dealing for a friend who cooked.”

“Fantastic.” Hermann shook his head. “Fantastic.”

Hermann left in a rage that day, abandoning the cook halfway through, Newton’s shrill objections following him up out of the basement. Newton came to him three days later with a few pages of illustrations, carefully labelled, demonstrating a faster, easier method.

“Shake and bake,” Newton said, handing the pages to Hermann. “You can check it out for yourself, but I think it’s the way to go.”

For some reason the alternative method created a blue pigmentation in the meth that they produced. Newton would sit in the corner of the basement, clashing metal blasting out of his headphones, while he read printed pages from the web, or text books he had borrowed from the library, trying to find the reason for the colouration.

“Look, the main thing is that we can still sell it,” Hermann had said loudly, pushing his short fringe off his forehead with the back of his wrist as he weighed out the blue rocks, tipping them into large separate bags.

“People won’t buy it if it doesn’t look right,” Newton replied, turning the page of his book. “The colour indicates impurities formed during the reaction. We’re making a mistake somewhere.”

Hermann rolled his eyes, “That’s covered by one of your numerous doctorates, no doubt?”

“No, dude. I read.” Newton exaggeratedly turned the page of his book, ripping the paper. He hissed, sucking air sharply past his teeth. Hermann turned to watch as he tried to squeeze the ripped page back together. “Shut up,” Newton said, without looking up.

  

Three months into their new endeavour Hermann managed to make contact with a wholesaler of sorts, a 'professional' named Hannibal Chau, found via Newton’s various and, needless to say, dubious contacts. Hermann arranged to meet him for the first time in a junk yard to the east of Los Lunas, where he passed over half a kilo of their product for on-the-spot testing and a sports bag filled with unmarked bills.

Chau had questioned him about the blue colouration, turning his face towards the blue rocks that he had tipped out into his large, flat hand, his ridiculous black goggle-glasses flashing in the sunlight. Hermann straightened his back in an attempt to look confident and parroted what Newton had told him excitedly a few days before: “We’ve altered our process from standard cooking techniques; we’ve switched from pseudoephedrine reduction to reductive amination. The colour is... regrettable, but unavoidable.” He nodded towards the jittery man at Chau’s side. “I’m sure your man can attest to the quality, despite this?”

Afterwards Hermann commented on how pleasantly surprised he was that drug dealing was so easy, but refused to let Newton meet with Chau when he asked about it later that same night, thumbing excitedly through the bound wads of cash. "What, you think I can't handle your big _connection_?" Newton put a heavy emphasis on the word as he furrowed his brow, drawing quotation marks in the air between them. “You realise that _I’m_  the one that’s done this shit before, right?”

 No, Hermann thought. You were a part time dealer before, not a supplier. This was an entirely different ball game, and Hermann wanted to deal with it as professionally as possible. Hermann didn't trust Chau in the slightest of course, despite his business-like manner and his practiced spiel. He was a necessary evil, one that Hermann wished to endure alone. He didn't need Newton bounding up to Chau like a child, lapping up his clichéd bullshit ("My favourite historical character and my second favourite Szechwan restaurant."  _Honestly_?) He had run the figures, he had weighed the odds, and his findings told him that limited exposure would not cause him too much damage; the difference between a much needed x-ray and battling through a reactor meltdown.

 

Six weeks later they had their first near miss in the basement when someone tried to get through the bolted door above them. They heard the man calling along the corridor to someone, saying that his key wasn’t working, “It’s jammed or something, man!” They stood in silence for what seemed like an age, barely daring to breathe, their eyes flicking towards one another, to the bubbling chemicals beside them, and back to the door. Finally they heard the man’s feet bumping back up the stairs, his voice rumbling. “That’s it,” Hermann had hissed, sweat beading along his hairline. “Get everything together. We’re moving.  _Now_.”

Afterwards Newton had laughed, lounging back on Hermann’s sofa with a beer in his hand, his sleeves rolled up, revealing a new and somewhat expensive looking tattoo, etched like a partially constructed monument up his forearm. His eyes watered as he recounted their narrow escape, “Oh man, I thought that was it. I thought we were  _screwed_!”

As a solution to the loss of their lab, Hermann caught a bus to a second hand car lot in Santa Fe and paid for a 1986 Fleetwood Bounder with cash (“Yes, I... I just love to camp”), and drove it back along the long grey road to Albuquerque.

Newton had barely been able to contain himself when he saw it for the first time. “Oh my god, dude. Dude! That is amazing, this is so awesome!”

It was pretty cool, not that Hermann would ever admit it. Certainly not out loud. But it did add a certain pleasure to the process, a sense of childlike adventure as they rolled through the desert, taking it in turns to drive, warm air whipping in through the open windows. Those hours in the RV almost made New Mexico bearable.

Originally Hermann had moved to America with his wife, Vanessa. They lived in New York as she pursued her modelling career, before moving to LA. When they split up Hermann moved out to Joshua Tree, then slowly moving further and further away until he ended up in Albuquerque. At first he had loved it, the stripped silence of the desert, the dry air, the colours. A palette of 'warming neutrals' from Home Depot, so different from the false lushness of LA, the beautiful veneer of artificiality that he had grown accustomed to.

It's funny how things change, Hermann thought to himself. All those things he'd once loved about New Mexico he now hated. The dust bowl, he called it. Drying his skin, mummifying him, clogging the wet corners of his mouth and filling his lungs. He hated the silence, he hated the long roads to nowhere, the grey cracked tarmac, the aridity of it all.

Hermann always thought that he covered this quite well, until they were carefully packing away their equipment one evening and Newton said, “Ok so, obviously you hate it here. New Mexico, I mean, you hate it right?”

“Whatever gave you that impression?” Hermann actually smiled, his mouth in a tight thin line. He carefully wrapped the last of the glass beakers in newspaper and wedged them in to a gap in the under seat storage at the back of the RV.

Newton caught his brief grin and instantly smiled back, moving towards the front of the RV. “So where would you rather be?” he asked, bumping down into the driver’s seat, throwing a look over his shoulder to check that everything has been packed away before he started the engine.

Hermann carefully manoeuvred into the seat beside Newton and leant his head back against the headrest, closing his eyes for a moment. “Meßstetten,” Hermann said eventually, lacing his fingers together in his lap.

“Mish-” Hermann opened his eyes and looked at Newton, who was looking at him expectantly.

“Meßstetten,” Hermann said again. “It's a little town in the South of Germany. That's my... retirement.”

Newton smiled again, then looked out to the track ahead, illuminated in the RVs headlights. “That's cool. That's cool.”

The black desert stretched out before them, and above, a black sky. Hermann thought of holidays in Meßstetten, the green-black woods at night, and in the morning the lush drip drip of dew, the crunch of twigs and leaves underfoot. He thought of Berlin in the winter time, black tree limbs against the blue sky, his breath in white puffs out across the river.

He looked up at the stars, a million points of light fading out one by one overhead. He did hate it here, he thought. The black abyss.

Although of course now there was Newton. Excited, enthusiastic, generally always slightly high or slightly wired, always agitated, restless. Green eyes behind those ridiculous glasses, his quick smile, his ever creeping tattoos, multicoloured under his collars, red and gold and vivid green. He stood out against the dull grey-brown of Albuquerque like a splinter of coloured glass. And he accepted Hermann, he supposed, not many people did, or could.

But still, Hermann hated the desert.


	3. Chapter 3

Six months in, their eleventh cook, and Newton picked Hermann up from outside his apartment. Getting picked up from home was never Hermann's favourite idea but his knee was particularly bad that day and he knew that walking into the town centre would be a worse one.

Newton's voice was low, scratchy, as Hermann climbed into the passenger seat. “Hey man.”

“Good morning.” Hermann eyed him suspiciously. “You sound terrible.”

Newton rolled his eyes and cracked a tired lopsided grin. “Don't worry, dude, I haven't been abusing the product for research.”

The camper came to a halt at a junction and Newton leant forward over the wheel to check the road. “Clear this side,” Hermann said without thinking, then immediately cringed at the domesticity of it all.

Newton did not notice however, pulling out of the junction with his eyes on the road as he continued, “Although I  _was_  doing research.”

“Oh yes.” Hermann tried to sound as disinterested as possible.

“Guess what they're calling our stuff.” Newton shot a glance at Hermann, a smile on his face.

Hermann just stared back, an eyebrow raised. “Do tell.”

Newton grinned, his teeth white. “Kaiju blue.”

“Sounds...” But Hermann could not think of an appropriate word.

“Awesome, right?” They pulled onto the long road out of town and Newton picked up some speed. “No one seems to know where it came from and no one knows what it means, but I looked it up. ‘Kaiju' is Japanese for creature, or beast. So it's like, The Blue Beast.”

Hermann couldn't help but feel a slight twinge of pride, as much as he hated to agree with Newton, that was an impressive name for their product.

“What d'you think?” There were bags under Newton's eyes, more stubble than usual on his chin.

“This is what you were researching?”

Newton shrugged, “Not specifically. I was getting a bit of customer feedback.”

“You think that's sensible, do you?”

“Hermann, these are junkies we're talking about, they're not detectives, they're not going to discover who I am and come after me,” he swerved the RV to avoid a red streak of some unknown road kill as he spoke. “Most of them were totally wasted anyway, so-”

“I don’t think that really makes a difference-”

“-they wouldn't have remembered-”

“That's what we have Chau for-”

“Hermann! I know what I'm doing alright!?”

“No, Newton, you clearly do not.” Hermann turned fully in his chair to glare at the side of Newton's head. “You are a thoughtless idiot, you could have been caught or killed or god knows what.”

“Oh come on, don't pretend you give a shit about me-”

“I don't. But if you're discovered then I will be too.” He turned back to face the front furiously. “You may not care about your own pathetic life, but I care about mine.”

They sat in stony silence after that, both seething. They did the cook without a word, working flawlessly as they always did. And afterwards they sat outside on deck chairs as the meth dried, Hermann reading his book and Newton drinking a beer.

“You're an asshole, Hermann,” Newton said finally, looking across the hot slice desert that separated them, over to where Hermann sat with his book on his knees. “A total asshole.”

Hermann looked up, as though surprised to see anyone else there. “Well, thank you for that assessment, Dr. Geiszler. I see how you achieved your impressive six doctorates now.”

Newton snorted and shook his head, looking away to the horizon. “So you never told me what you think of the name?”

Herman looked up from his book once again. “Kaiju blue?” Hermann pursed his lips and considered his response. If he praised the name he would be implying, in some roundabout way, that Newton was right, which of course was unacceptable. “It... serves a purpose.”

“Ha,” Newton said, suddenly pleased. “You like it.”

Hermann frowned and looked back down at his book without a word.

Newton seemed happier after that, and when they finished the cook he held up a hand for a high five, though Hermann left him hanging. “I know you love me really,” Newton said as Hermann turned away to climb into the driver’s seat.

  

Hermann became very conscious of Newton’s ‘consumer research’ from then on. As the evenings grew steadily colder Newton would go out and return a few days later with information about the scope of their product, the scale of the demand, all of which was essential for their marketing plan of course. Occasionally he would turn up for a cook with interesting tales about jumping fences or hiding from cops or junkies with switchblades.

After Hermann’s continual assertions that Newton needed to take responsibility for his actions Newton bought a gun, a little Smith and Wesson that Hermann refused to touch when Newton had held it out to him. “Feel it, seriously! It’s got a good weight…”

“This is how you decided to interpret my advice, is it?” Hermann narrowed his eyes at Newton, utterly disbelieving.

Newton had shrugged, the gun waving worryingly about in his hand. “Look, this is me looking after myself. It’s totally cool, it’s fine.”

Hermann decided that yes, Newton was an adult, whether he acted like it or not. And yes, he was well within his rights to carry a gun if he so wished, this was  _America_  after all. And of course, he was free to go about his consumer research if that was what got him through the evenings. Hermann just wished that he could get through those particular evenings without experiencing a niggling feeling in the back of his head, wished that he could just sit and read with the lights low without feeling, dare he say it,  _concern_. It was funny though, Hermann spent so many nights worrying about how other people might damage Newton that he didn’t stop to think how Newton might damage himself.

Three weeks before Christmas Newton came back with a piece of information that he relayed to Hermann in a rush of barely suppressed excitement. He came to Hermann’s apartment to tell him that apparently they called it ‘The Drift’, the electric haze that washed over you when you smoked the blue stuff. “They said that it’s like, like a spiritual experience,” Newton had said, hands moving restlessly, touching his hair, smoothing down the front of his t-shirt. “You see your past, your future. You can relive memories as though they were real, right in front of you. They say it’s the best out there, the best anyone’s ever had.” Hermann could see that this information was appealing to the worst in Newton, to whatever part of him was still embedded in the ‘history’ that everyone at JP Wynn had known about. As far as he knew, Newton had not yet tried their product, instead electing to smoke a lot of weed and drink a lot of whiskey. But as Newton recalled the descriptions he had collected of The Drift he became agitated, tantalised by the possibilities that were so easily within reach.

Hermann tried to talk him out of it, of course he did. It was dangerous, it was foolish, “Newton, this could be it for you. Addicts-”

“I’m not an addict,” Newton had said quickly. “I was never an addict. I was just... casual, you know. I was a casual user.”

Hermann knew one way or another that Newton was going to test the product, to experience The Blue Beast, The Drift. Newton persuaded Hermann that the safest way to do it was to do it together. Hermann could be his spotter, there in case of emergencies, while Newton did what he had to do. Not that he had to do it, Hermann had said, refusing to plead with him but feeling a tug of desperation in the bottom of his stomach every time the subject came up.

“Just for the record, I do not advise this,” Hermann said, staring down at Newton as he settled himself on the worn fold-out bed that dominated the living room of Newton’s newest apartment. The man moved from place to place like a bloody hermit crab, Hermann thought.

Newton ignored him. “Come here,” he said

Hermann scoffed at the command. “I beg your pardon?”

Newton looked up at Hermann, his eyes soft behind his glasses. “Come here, Hermann.”

“I said-”

“Hermann, please.” Newton moved over slightly and placed his hand on the greying sheet next to him. “Just come and sit with me.”

Hermann clenched his teeth together for a moment then moved jerkily to the bedside, sitting down and carefully stretching out his leg. Newton turned to him without a word, his hand moving across the bed to pick up the glass pipe. Hermann noted that it had already been packed with the blue stuff, sparkling faintly under the coloured Christmas lights that Newton had haphazardly dangled above his bed.

“I need you to-” Newton broke off, holding out the pipe towards Hermann.

“You expect me to help you do something that I think is idiotic, unnecessary, and irresponsible?”

“Yeah,” Newton said, reaching for the lighter as he placed the cool glass pipe in Hermann's hand.

There was no question in his voice, no hint of fear or resistance. Hermann looked back without a word, and when he didn't move Newton reached out and cupped his hand around Hermann's, lifting his hand and the glass pipe to his lips. The lighter gasped and flickered in his free hand, flashing red and white across Newton's glasses. Newton flicked his eyes down to the flame where it began to lick the bottom of the glass bowl, then looked back up at Hermann. His lips moving around the pipe as he spoke, his voice quiet but steady. “Catch you in the drift,” he said, then closed his eyes, sucking the rising vapour down into his hot lungs.


	4. Chapter 4

Hermann sat with Newton following his little experiment, watching him carefully as came round eight hours later clutching his stomach. His eyes heavy, a rueful smile on his face.

“It isn't right yet,” he said to Hermann in the RV a week later as he wrote up his findings, making his plans to alter the process and try again. “We have to have a competitive product.”

Trust Newton to only consider the biological effects, cataloguing his restlessness, his palpitations, checking his pulse and measuring his blood pressure. Researching the psychological side effects, both negative and positive. Hallucinations, paranoia, dermatillomania, hyperactivity, insomnia, withdrawal.

Hermann could only see the maths. One kilo of meth equated to sixty thousand dollars, thirty thousand for himself. That was twenty-two thousand one hundred and ninety-one euros. If he and Newton could just keep it together to produce twenty-five pounds of the blue stuff, he would be well set to make a new life for himself. Return to Germany maybe, go interrailing around Europe, do the things he had never had the time for when he was younger.

“Hey,” Newton said, looking up from his notes, his glasses perched on the very end of his nose. “Do you wanna get a drink tonight? When we get back, I mean, it’s gonna be pretty early. Plus, y’know, we kind of missed New Year’s.”

Hermann narrows his eyes, “Is this some sort of hilarious ruse to get me to meet your ‘sweat box’ lot?”

Hermann’s suspicions were not totally unfounded; Newton had made two previous attempts at getting Hermann integrated with other people. After the second time Hermann had made sure that he would not be invited out again.

Newton’s mouth twitched on one side. “No, Hermann. I promise I won’t try and get you some social interaction.” And then, in his best Hermann accent, “Heaven forfend!”

Hermann clunked the end of his cane on the floor of the RV, leaning back against the little kitchen surface, “Well, I’m sure you remember the last two times very fondly, Dr. Geiszler.”

Newton laughed. “Yeah, how could I forget.” The first time Hermann had come for a drink he had attempted to offer Newton’s friends money, thinking they were beggars, and the second time he had likened the entire group to the cast of The Night of the Living Dead.

Newton stretched his arms and legs in front of him, his notepad and pencil falling to the floor. “Do you wanna go?”

Hermann pursed his lips and looked at the little pictures that Newton had sticky-taped to the kitchen cupboards; drawings of himself, drawings of Hermann, illustrations of body parts in a pseudo-Da Vinci style. He looked back at Newton and said, “Very well.”

They went to a bar back in Albuquerque called The Barley Room, which was wooden clad and stuffy, much to Hermann’s distaste. “Hump day karaoke,” he read from the poster stuck to the wall behind Newton’s head, his beer paused half way to his mouth.

Newton twisted around to look. “Oh yeah dude, it’s-”

Hermann held up his hand. “Please, spare me.”

“Is there anything that you  _do_  like?” Newton said, narrowing his eyes at Hermann.

“Peace and quiet,” Hermann replied immediately, taking a sip of his beer. “And fewer questions.”

Newton rolled his eyes and looked out across the room; a band was setting up in the corner. The chalk board above the bar declared that it was ‘Stratus Phear: Albuquerque’s Premier Classic Rock and Variety Band’.

“Well,” Newton said. “I don’t know about you, but tonight it looks like I’m gonna be liking Stratus Phear.”

Hermann snorted. “Sounds...”

“Great, huh? Another beer?” Newton had already stood up, his hand straying to his black tie, tugging it loose.

Hermann flat out refused to drink more than four beers, instead opting to sit and watch the band set up on the little stage as Newton get steadily more and more drunk.

Hermann talked about his love of birds, about the great eagles that you can sometimes see in Albuquerque if you know what you’re looking for. Newton talked about his childhood, growing up as a worryingly smart young man in a family of average individuals, how he taught at MIT for six years, and other lies. Well, so Hermann assumed. It just couldn’t be true, so he refused to accept it.

Nine beers and ninety-seven minutes later and Newton was stood on the stage, thrumming out some god awful tune on a borrowed guitar, his black tie around his head like a bandana. The band, bearded and huge, playing around him, laughing and shaking their heads, while Hermann hovered at the side of the stage trying to coax Newton down.

“Thank you, Albuquerque!” Newton shouted, gripping his bottom lip between his teeth as he dramatically finished his impromptu guitar solo, before it was finally taken away from him and he was ushered from the stage.

Newton wavered for a second before finding his feet and making his way to the bar, gesturing wildly to the barman for more drinks. “Two beers please, my man!”

“No,” Hermann said, and then shouted it across the bar. “No! Thank you.” He gripped Newton’s arm, noticing, oddly, how his newest tattoo felt three dimensional under his fingers.

“Come on, one more?” Newton grinned wide, one eye slightly more shut than the other, his black glasses completely skewed.

Hermann shook his head. “The RV,” he said simply.

Newton’s face fell. “Oh yeah.”

That night they slept in the bare RV, shuddering under their jackets. Hermann had decided that he was too over the limit to drive, and Newton was too drunk to try and persuade him otherwise. In the morning they blundered about, clacking their furred tongues and wincing in the sunlight that had managed to sneak through gaps in the covered windows.

“Good job we don’t have day jobs any more, huh?” Newton said, his head between his knees.

Hermann sat for a long time trying to muster the energy to stand, attempting to ignore the throbbing pain in his knee. Eventually he hauled himself up, his knee immediately giving way, causing him to bump back against the wall of the RV.

“Woah, man, are you ok?” Newton scrambled to his feet and moved across the floor to place a steadying hand under Hermann’s forearm.

Hermann nodded. “Fine. It’s fine.”

Newton considered Hermann, then he nodded too. “I’ll drive yeah?”

Hermann thought for a moment to protest: No thank you, Newton, I’m perfectly capable! But then he turned to look at Newton and saw nothing but genuine concern there, in his slightly furrowed brow, his wide bloodshot eyes. So he merely cleared his throat, small and quiet, and said, “Yes… Thank you, Newton.”

 

When he had finally returned home Hermann took the meth they had cooked the day before and carefully weighed it along with the product of two previous cooks. He hadn’t had a meeting with Chau in almost three weeks; evidently he was a busy man.

Three point two kilos: One hundred and ninety-two thousand dollars.

Hermann sat back, puffing his cheeks out before slowly blowing the air back out into the room.

“Holy shit,” he said, because Newton was not there to say it. “Holy. Shit.”

 

A week later Hermann made his way to Chau’s ‘office’, a derelict looking building way out in Veguita. Despite its dilapidated appearance Hermann knew that Chau had fitted the building with the best security systems money could buy; he’d seen the banks of monitors showing shots of the interior, the exterior, even Chau’s own office. Hermann was buzzed in by a large man with a shaved head, who patted him down before he was allowed to proceed up to Chau’s office on the second floor.

“Dr. Gottlieb,” Chau said, sticking out his large chin. “No Dr. Geiszler again?”

Chau had taken an unreasonable amount of interest in Hermann’s 'business partner'. He asked to meet him so many times that Hermann had almost run out of excuses as to why it wasn’t possible. Hermann wasn’t sure why he was so interested, surely it only took one man to make a delivery.

“He has a part time job, as I've said,” Hermann had been telling this lie for two month now, and it became weaker with every retelling.

“Then we’ll meet in the evening next time,” Chau had said. “I won't take another no.”

Hermann left Chau under a deep pink sunset, clouds splayed out across the horizon. He did not want Newton to meet Chau; he was too unpredictable, too dangerous. Newton too trusting, too bloody naive. But what choice did he have?

Reluctantly Hermann phoned Newton later that night, and with a sigh said, “You're going to have to meet Chau.”

“Ok, cool,” Newton replied simply, his voice tinny over the phone. “When?”

“Next month, when I take the product,” Hermann looked down at his slippered feet, then across the room, trying to picture Newton on the phone, trying to decide whether he was secretly scared or genuinely nonchalant. “It could be dangerous.”

“Hey,” Newton said with a smile in his voice. “Danger's my middle name.”

Hermann continued to stare at his slippers, mentally counting out the edges of the houndstooth design, continuing until he had reached an even number before saying, “You know. We made almost two-hundred thousand dollars on that last deal.”

“Yeah I know, awesome right?” Newton was flicking between channels, Hermann could hear the truncated sounds in the background.

He took a breath. “We could stop now, we’ve- We have a lot of money.”

Newton was silent and then he laughed. “Quit while you’re ahead, right? That’s what you’re thinking?”

“Something like that,” Hermann replied, rubbing at his eyes.

“Well, let’s just get a little further ahead before we call it a day, huh?”

Hermann rolled his eyes. “Newton, that’s the very opposite of what I’m saying.”

Newton laughed. “Don’t worry so much, Hermann! It’s cool, everything is cool.”


	5. Chapter 5

The following month Hermann drove them both down to Veguita in the RV, not wanting Chau to see his Prius. They pulled up about a block from Chau’s office and walked slowly along the grey tarmac together, Newton fussing constantly with his hair. Hermann could practically see the nervous energy emanating from Newton as they arrived at the heavy shuttered door and waited to be buzzed in.

“Newton-”

“It’s cool,” Newton said, shooting a quick sideways smile at Hermann. “It’s good to be psyched.”

When they met, Chau eyed Newton suspiciously, his glasses propped on top of his head, revealing a deep scar and a blurred grey iris, making him look all the more ‘authentically lawless’. Hermann was positive that he was doing it for Newton’s benefit, either to intimidate or impress, or both.

“Dr. Geiszler,” Chau said by way of a greeting, his good eye hard and cautious until Newt did his ‘Call me Newt’ line. Then Chau had grinned wide, showing his golden grill.

“So,  _Newt_ , you're the man in charge of customer satisfaction?” Chau glanced at Hermann as he spoke, before turning to focus on Newton.

“Well,” Newton's voice was bouncing, what Hermann supposed was his attempt at a casual lilt. “I guess so, yeah, I try to make sure the product is as good as it can be.”

“You aim to satisfy?”

Newton flicked his eyes to Hermann for a fraction of a second, as though attempting to gauge in that moment what his reaction should be based on Hermann's expression. “Er, yeah. Yeah, that's the name of the game.”

Chau had simply grinned.

 

“You don't trust him?” Newton said three days later as he gently swirled a glass beaker, lithium slowly bronzing in the bottom. Beads of sweat were trickling down his forehead and around his mask as he moved, despite how cool and cloudy the afternoon was.

“Of course not,” Hermann replied, irritably rattling a container of sodium hydroxide.

“You don’t think I should have anything to do with him?”

Hermann looked across at Newton and said again, “Of course not.”

“Are you worried about me?” Newton was smiling, Hermann could tell by the lines around his eyes. “You can’t pretend this is a self-preservation thing this time.”

Hermann ignored him.

“I think you're worried he's going to do something sinister with me,” Newton snorted, holding out the beaker so that Hermann could add more sodium hydroxide. “You do know I'm in my thirties, Hermann, I'm a fully qualified adult.”

“Then do as you please, Newton,” Hermann said impatiently, slamming the container of lye down on the counter much harder than he was meaning to. “I was merely offering my advice.”

Newton carefully placed the beaker on the surface and turned to look at Hermann. “Dude, you don't always have to be like this, you know? We're like, friends now, aren’t we?”

“Colleagues at best-”

“Exactly, look. As much as it pains me to say it, I respect you. I respect your opinions,” Newton raised his hands in the air. “And hey, if you think this business with Chau is no good then I'll respect that.”

“Will it change your actions though?”

Newton smiled. “Probably not, no.”

“Well then.”

Later than evening they sat out in the chill of the desert, leaning back in matching plastic deck chairs, wrapped in layers against the unusual cold. A blue-green sky stretched wide overhead, preparing for the sunset.

"Tell me about Meßstetten," Newton said, lolling his head sideways to look at Hermann. "I'm curious."

Hermann made a non-committal noise, took a breath as though he were about to start talking then let it out slowly through his nose and said nothing.

"Hermann, come on, dude, let's at least talk a bit." Newton stretched out his arm and pointed with his beer bottle, attempting to knock Hermann's elbow with it. "Come on, tell me about the forests and the birds or whatever."

Hermann rolled his eyes and sighed. "There's really nothing to tell."

"Try. Just try and pretend you want to talk to me." Newton was smiling. Hermann could always tell, even without looking at him.

"Fine." Hermann crossed his arms in front of his chest and looked up, squinting against the setting sun. "When I was very small my parents would take us all to this little camp site just outside of Meßstetten, we would complain about it but only really because that was our job as the children, I think we really quite enjoyed it."

Newton snorted. "I was the same with school, dude, I would complain when I was little, just because I thought that was like, the done thing."

Hermann looked over at Newton for a second, confirming he had finished butting in before continuing, "So, we would go to Meßstetten once a year and we'd go on hikes through the nature reserve. Best part being the bird watching towers, of course-"

"Hence the love of birds, right?"

"Newton, must you?" Hermann threw up his arms in exasperation, until he realised what a Newton-esque expression of physicality that was and quickly crossed his arms firmly over his chest again. "Do you even care?"

Newton took a sip of his beer. "I'm sorry, Hermann. Do continue."

"So, we. The bird towers. We would- For god sake, Newton, what?"

Newton's beer had dropped into the sand beside his chair. "Look! What the fuck is that? Cars? That’s a car, right?" He was on his feet, pointing out across the desert to the plume of dust thrown up by unseen vehicles.

Hermann stood, narrowing his eyes, following the movement of the dark cloud of dust. There was no doubt about it, a vehicle was heading straight for them across the darkening desert. "Get the masks," he said. "Get the masks!"

Newton started rushing around, fumbling as he tried to fold chairs and pick up beer bottles.

"Newton, what are you doing!? Get the bloody masks!" Hermann pushed past him to where the masks were hung over the wing mirror, grabbing them and throwing one to Newton. "We'll have to try and outrun them, it's the only thing we can do."

Newton paused, the mask in his hands. He looked down, rubbing his thumb over the plastic visor. "Hermann," he said. "We always have the-"

"No," Hermann said, pulling on his own mask. "Categorically. Get the mask on and get in the RV. That is the  _only_  option, do you understand me?" And then as an afterthought, “You shouldn’t even have brought the bloody thing!”

Newton seemed to waver for a moment, his teeth gnawing at his lip, before he shook his head and started to pull the mask over his head.

Hermann considered their options as he pulled on his own mask; if they took the RV south east they could get onto US-550 in ten minutes or so, and then make their way into Bernalillo within forty-six minutes, forty-three at a push. Hermann hurried around to the driver’s side door, throwing a glance over his shoulder to check the oncoming vehicles, thankful that they were still some way off. It was Chau, Hermann was certain of it, coming for Newton for whatever bizarre reason. But how did he know where they were cooking? How did he know they would be there today? He shouldn’t have taken the RV to Veguita. What a foolish thing to have done!

Hermann pressed his foot to the floor as they bumped their way across the desert, dust flying up around them, swirling past the windows. Newton was twisted in his seat, his gas mask pressed up against the passenger window as he tried to see the pursuing vehicles. After a moment he turned back, shot a glance at Hermann and slammed his hand against the glove compartment. It sprung open and his little Smith and Wesson shuddered forwards, as thought presenting itself dramatically. They bumped on to US-550, the contents of their little lab sliding across the RV floor, clanking and crashing. The detritus of their panic.

Hermann looked at the gun out of the corner of his eye. “Newton, what did I say?  _Under no circumstance_.” Newton ignored him, wrapping his hand around the gun as he turned back and wound down his window, poking his head out like a pet dog. “Newton!” Hermann could hear him shouting something, but over the rush of the wind, the whine of the engine, and Newton’s mask, he couldn’t hear more than a rumble of noise.

“They’re turning away, they’re not following us,” Newton shouted, turning to face Hermann in a rush, his breath fogging the inside of his mask. “They’re not following us!”

Hermann stared at him for a moment before swerving suddenly to the left, bumping over the low bushes at the side of the road and coming to rest in a cloud of dust that slowly dispersed around them. He grabbed Newton’s arm and wrested the gun from his grip. “Bloody idiot,” he spat. “Reckless bloody imbecile!”

Newton stared at him opened mouthed, his red palms held out in front of him. “Hermann, they could have been sent to fucking kill us for all we knew!”

“And we didn’t know,” Hermann growled back from behind his mask. “You can’t just wave this thing around at the drop of a hat!”

“I don’t think you understand what business we’re in,” Newton said in a patronising tone. He spoke slowly, his hands moving as though to bracket each word in his sentence, “We. Are. Drug. Dealers. We. Are. Dangerous.”

Hermann rolled his eyes. “Please do try and accept reality, Newton. You’re a high school science teacher gone awry, not Tony Montana. Dressing like a rock star does not make one a rock star.”

“Hey, fuck you,” Newton said with a cruel smile. “You’re pathetic, you know that? You could have taken that pay cut, you could have been Stacker’s accountant, but you didn’t. Right? You came to  _me_ , Hermann. So don’t act like I’m the one chasing after some juvenile dream of misadventure.”

Hermann glared at Newton, the pressure of his gritted teeth squealing in his ears as he turned away and started the engine once again. They drove the rest of the way back to Albuquerque in silence, their masks tossed into the back of the RV along with the rest of the wreckage of their little lab. When Hermann stopped outside of Newton’s apartment he did not wait for Newton to get out, instead climbing out himself and slamming the RV door without a word, walking defiantly away, doing his best not to limp until he got out of sight. The hard tap tap tap of his cane swallowed by the sound of the passing traffic.


	6. Chapter 6

 They didn’t speak for almost a month after that, not until Newton phoned Hermann to tell him that he was going to work with Chau.

“And what of our endeavour?” Hermann had said.

“Well,” Newton said, clearing his throat. “That’s technically only part time, I can do both right?”

“You think Chau will allow that do you?” Hermann stared at the silent picture on his TV screen. A great fat cuckoo chick trilling in silence as its little adoptive parents rushed around it.

“Chau’s cool, Hermann.” Newton cleared his throat again. “He’s a business man.”

Hermann almost laughed, but swallowed it down. “When do you start?”

“He said he’d call me.”

“How romantic.”

Hermann could practically  _hear_  Newton’s smug grin. “Don’t be jealous now.”

Hermann hung up.

 

Their meetings from then on were sporadic. Newton almost always turned up for cooks, but there were two that he missed. When he did turn up he looked weathered, tired. Hermann refused to ask him about whatever work it was that Chau was getting him to do, it was his own business if he wanted to be an idiot and endanger himself.

After almost three months of this, Newton turned up to a cook with a cut that ran along his jaw line and a bruise that was swelling under the collar of his shirt. He avoided Hermann’s critical gaze as he slid into the passenger seat of the RV, breathing on the lenses of his glasses and looking off into the distance as he rubbed them on his trousers. Hermann’s jaw was tight as he stared at the side of Newton’s head, finally deciding to say something.

"It's a hazard of the job," Newton had said dismissively. "Don't worry about it."

Hermann frowned down at Newton. "What  _job_ , exactly?"

"It's really none of your business, Hermann." Newton's voice was cold, hard. There was an edge to it that Hermann had not heard before.

They worked in silence for the rest of the day. It was only when they were sat waiting outside of the RV that Hermann tried again with a less subtle, "What does he make you do?"

Newton cocked his head sideways, then smiled and shook his head. "Why does everything have to be so sinister with you, Hermann? He isn't making me  _do_  anything." He paused, surveying Hermann over the top of his glasses. "I'm creative consultant."

Hermann frowned.

"There's lots of different things involved, ok?" Newton held out an arm towards Hermann, his shirt sleeve riding up and revealing yet another new tattoo. The skin dry and flaking over the top of it, like a snake shedding its skin. "I went with him and a couple of his guys to this cook over in Sandia Heights. It got a bit out of hand, I shouldn't have been involved."

"And this is what you want from your life, is it?" Hermann hadn’t realised that he was going to ask that question until the words had left his mouth.

Newton snorted, "Well shit, I'm sorry. I forgot that I was talking to Dr. Gottlieb: Forerunner in hypocrisy research." He shook his head again. "You need to get over yourself, man."

Hermann got home that night and decided that whatever Newton wanted from his life, this certainly  _wasn’t_  what Hermann wanted; he wanted to be a teacher, like he had always planned. He wanted to help people, not destroy them. He decided to go back to Germany, visit Dietrich and take some time off, do some physio, buy a little house maybe, go bird watching in Meßstetten.

He decided to pack, to sell those things he didn’t need, to get his affairs in order, put his money in the bank. He ignored the disused RV parked two blocks away, half hoping someone would break into it and take it away so that he wouldn’t have to deal with it. He ignored Newton, who attempted to call him on two separate occasions but never left a message.

 

Three months later, and three days before his flight to Berlin, he arrived home early one Saturday evening, ready for one of his last nights in Albuquerque. Carrying a warm plastic bag of Chinese food in one hand, and travel brochures in the other, he knocked the front door closed with the tip of his cane as he walked across the living room towards the kitchen, clicking the ‘play message’ button on the blinking answer machine as he passed it. He dropped the bag of Chinese food on the kitchen counter as he grabbed the empty kettle, the machine beeping as it began to relay his messages.

Newton’s familiar voice made Hermann stop in his tracks, his shoe squeaking on the kitchen floor as he turned to stare at the machine.

“Hermann, you were right. You were right, you were right,” his voice was hushed, hurried. He sounded as though he had a bad cold, or as though he hadn’t slept in a long time. “I’ve fucked up. Listen, I- Don’t try and phone me, don’t try this number. But you can come and see me, 7140 Jaime Drive, South Valley.”

The machine beeped.

Hermann stared at the machine, his heart thudding so hard it almost hurt. He stood still for a long time, the kettle hanging at his side, trying to understand what the message could mean. Why Newton would have phoned him instead of the police if he was in danger. Why he hadn’t left a message before. Just, why. He stayed up that night, sat on his sofa watching documentaries on mute until the early hours of the morning, shooting suspicious glances at the answer machine. As the sun rose, the white light shining through the gaps in the curtained windows, Hermann decided to take his car and go and check out the address, just in case.

He drove slowly, cautiously making a mental image of the area as he drove through it, in case he had to leave in a rush. He was aware that he was entering a cul-de-sac as he turned into Jaime Drive, so he parked at the entrance of the road and walked the rest of the way, checking the numbers on the houses until he got to 7140. From the outside it was just as plain and average as the other clapboard houses that surrounded it, dotted here and there on the brown, dry earth, separated by squares of barely green grass inside white chain-link fences.

As he walked up to the front door he noticed a sign in the window that read ‘Show home: No valuables are left in this property over night’. He walked around the building and saw the low thin windows of the basement. He leant awkwardly down to look but they were blocked. The house appeared to be completely empty, silent.

He took a deep breath and slowly let it out, his eyes raking over the outside of the building. Maybe Newton had given the wrong address, maybe it was a joke, maybe it was a ploy to get Hermann out here alone. But no, Hermann was slow on his feet, Chau could come and get him any time if he had wanted to, and it wasn’t much of a joke to get him to drive half an hour out of his way. Newton was in some sort of trouble, Hermann was sure of it.

He sighed, leaning on his cane as he looked up at the crisp blue sky above him. He knew what he had to do, whether he wanted to or not.


	7. Chapter 7

Chau sat waiting for him, his hands folded over his stomach, his feet stretched out below his desk, crossed at the ankles. “Good to see you, Dr. Gottlieb," he said slowly as Hermann took a seat and nodded. "I heard you were out of the business?"

“’Forced retirement’ is what they call it I believe.” Although Hermann could not see Chau's eyes, he could feel his stare boring into him. But he did not shift.

Finally Chau raised his eyebrows, "You want to start cooking again?"

“I wouldn’t define it as ' _wanting_ ', I’m afraid it’s necessary.” Hermann paused, giving Chau a moment to grin his thick golden grin and joke, “Well, don’t be  _afraid_ , Dr. Gottlieb.” Hermann raised his eyebrows before continuing, “As Dr. Geiszler’s gone AWOL I had the impression that you might know of another cook who would be able to assist me.”

“That’s real funny, Dr. Gottlieb,” Chau said, gathering his black jacket about him as he stood and stepped around the desk in a few short strides, his shoes clicking on the polished floor. "Tell me, now that Geiszler is working for me, do you really think that I’m going to help you go in to direct competition with me?” His voice was low, casual, but there was a heat that suddenly radiated from him that scared Hermann, as much as he was loath to admit. Hermann merely glared at Chau, saying nothing. Chau continued, “I actually like you, y’know? You’re a smart guy, and I respect you. Do you know what that means?”

“Something cliché, no doubt,” Hermann said, his own bravado shaking him.

Chau leant forwards, the tips of his golden boots almost touching Hermann’s brown brogues. “It means that if you get out of my office now, I'll pretend this never happened. But if you fuck me around, Hermann, I will kill you. Do you understand?"

Hermann's jaw was clenched so tight that his teeth cracked, he stood up quickly, as quickly as he could at least, making Chau take half a step back. "Very well," Hermann said, his mind made up. "I'm sorry it had to be like this."

Chau smiled wide and gestured towards the door, “My man will show you out."

 

It seemed ridiculous. Hermann looked back on the last eighteen months and wondered, not for the first time, what had become of his life. He sat at his desk taking a little silver and black gun apart, following a labelled drawing he had found online. He rolled the bullets between his fingers, pushing their tips into the palm of his hand and tryid to imagine what it would feel like to have one of them tear a hole in your skin, burrowing into your flesh and chipping bone.

He rubbed his hand over his knee, it had been particularly bad since his meeting with Chau, but he tried to ignore it for the time being. It wouldn't be long before he could relax.

He reassembled the gun slowly and carefully placed it on the motel bed next to his keys, a pair of leather gloves and a black cap. He took a deep breath, then started to lift the items off the bed, placing them in his pockets.

 

It was easy enough to gain access to the house, he simply picked the lock on the back door with two stretched out bobby pins. There was some part of him that had hoped he wouldn’t be able to get in, but evidently Chau only cared about his own security.

As he moved slowly through the house Hermann saw one man sat in the living room with the curtains drawn, a cookery show on the little TV in front of him. Hermann took the gun from his pocket and held it out in front of him, his hand shook for a moment until he breathed slowly in, steadying his arm. He looked at the back of the man’s head, at the swirl of chalky blonde hair there, and pulled the trigger. The strength of the blast blew the gun back into Hermann’s hand, bruising his palm a dark black-blue. The bullet hit the man in the back of the head and he slumped forwards without a word, his red blood spotting the TV screen.

Hermann turned as he heard a second person running up from the basement, holding the gun in front of him, his arm straight and strong, ready for the blast this time. An anticlimactic pop echoed through the house as the second man turned the corner, immediately crumpling to the ground, carried forward into the room by his own inertia. The man dropped his gun as he fell, his hands reaching up to clutch at the suddenly gushing hole in his neck. Hermann stood poised, waiting for others, but no more came.

He looked down at the man’s shuddering body, at his open mouth, his eyes frantically darting about as Hermann carefully stepped over him. Then the man stilled, and a long, sickly gurgle escaped his mouth, his fingers slipping from the wound in his neck and falling to the floor. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. Hermann swallowed, trying to hold back the horrifying truth of what he had just done.

Keep it together, he thought. Keep it together.

Hermann turned and saw the open door to the basement, he moved towards it cautiously, the gun ready. He could feel vomit rising in his throat, but swallowed hard to keep it down as he started to descent the stairs. As he neared the bottom he saw Newton in the far corner between two long sideboards covered in lab equipment. His beard was rough, his hair overly long and unwashed as he cowered, his hands shaking over his face.

Hermann quickly checked that there was no one else in the basement, then moved across to Newton as fast as his leg would allow. He knew that he was not feeling the pain at that moment because of the adrenaline, but was very aware that it was going to be bad as soon as he came down.

"Newton, Newton for god sake.” He had the urge to nudge Newton with his cane, but he had not brought it with him.

“Hermann?” There was so much surprise in Newton's voice that it almost physically hurt Hermann. He stared at Newton, at the wet panic in his eyes. “You-”

“Come along, Newton.” Hermann reached down and pulled at Newton's elbow. “We're leaving.”

“But Chau-”

“There is no need to worry, Newton. It's over, we're leaving.” Hermann gripped the sideboard tight, taking the weight off his bad leg as he helped Newton to his feet, the gun resting under Newton’s forearm.

Newton opened his mouth to speak as they made their way upstairs, seeing the dead man on the floor. But Hermann simply shook his head and said nothing, pulling Newton towards the back door.

They stumbled arm in arm to the RV, pointedly parked in front of the house so that witnesses would see it, so that Chau would  _know_. Inside they sat in silence as Hermann started the engine, his knee throbbing dully with the furious beat of his heart. They drove north for twenty minutes, Hermann taking turns on roads that Newton wouldn’t have recognised, until they ended up in the middle of a sparse trading estate. Hermann had parked his little Prius outside of an industrial laundry building two days before, packed and ready to go.

As they got out of the RV Hermann threw the Prius keys to Newton before turning back, opening the side door of the RV and leaning in to grab a red gas can, dowsing the inside in long slow strokes. He took Newton’s lighter from his pocket, the same one that he had used the first time he had tried the blue stuff. Hermann knew this because he had pocketed it while Newton slept, although at the time he had not known why. He lit the only thing he had in his pocket, a $10 bill, carefully dropped it into the pooling gas and shut the RV door.

The fire licked the windows of the RV cab as they drove away, red and gold in Hermann’s rear-view mirror. He could see Newton watching it with bloodshot eyes until he eventually spoke, his voice wretched, “Hermann?”

“Hm.”

“You saved me.”

Hermann let his eyes drift closed for the tiniest of moments before he replied, “Well, I knew there had to be something terribly wrong when you called me to tell me I was right about something.”

“You know how I hate that.”

Hermann rolled his eyes as he turned onto the I-25 to Santa Fe. “Quite.”

“I love you,” Newton smiled, exhausted.

“That really isn't necessary, Dr. Geiszler.”

Newton snorted, reaching across to touch the back of Hermann’s hand where it gripped the steering wheel, his fingers curling for a moment to touch the underside of his wrist, before turning to look out the window. Hermann stared ahead and said nothing more.

Before them lay a red sunrise blazing to the east, and behind them the cool blue of night was disappearing along the curvature of the earth.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost of an older fic, but now in chapters! Whoo!
> 
> Also, I'm pretty sure that I have absorbed Jamnesias' Infinite Regress, Under Duress to the point where her Dietrich is my canon now, hence the 'Hermann's favourite sibling'. GO AND READ THAT FIC.


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